by Scott Innes
I’ll lay my cards on the table and admit that I’ve never been the subject of an ancient intergalactic prophecy and hence found myself burdened with strange and devastating powers, the full extent of which I couldn’t possibly comprehend. I’ll cop to that straight away. So there’s no way I could ever claim to know how Gerry must have been feeling, the confusion and fear that must have been coursing through his veins every moment of every day since our return from the wilds of Palangonia. That said, would it kill the guy to crack a smile every once in a while? I hadn’t seen anyone so depressed since Nicky Weaver got cornered by Stuart Pearce at the Man City Christmas party in 2001 and had to listen to half an hour of Stu telling him about his diabetic dog.
Four days after Barrington12’s arrest (a revelation which I was still trying and failing to come to terms with), I arranged to meet Gerry in the Compound Square. My hope was that if we could have a mooch about for an idle afternoon, maybe buy some of those Gryzelphian chocolate truffles he liked, the ones with surprise fillings ranging from strawberry crème to sulphuric acid, it might help to lift his spirits – and that, in turn, we might repair our faltering friendship. I wasn’t sure whether he blamed me for getting him into this mess or whether he just wanted to be left alone, but either way I felt like I was losing him – and I couldn’t have that.
What I saw on arrival in the square filled me with horror and a sickly dread in the pit of my stomach: Gerry was sitting on the bench outside Flix, as arranged, but he was not alone. Beside him, speaking in a low voice that I couldn’t quite hear, was the General.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, trying to keep the worry from my voice as I trotted over to them.
‘Nothing,’ Leigh replied darkly. ‘And actually, this is a private conversation, so if you don’t mind…’
‘Well, I do mind,’ I said. I looked at Gerry, who had his hands stuffed in his pockets and was staring away across the square. ‘What’s he been saying to you?’
Gerry shrugged. ‘Nothing I want to talk about,’ he replied. ‘I already told him I wasn’t interested. I’m a football coach, not a soldier.’
Leigh slammed a hand down on his own thigh and sat forward, leaning in to speak to Gerry in urgent, hushed tones.
‘I’m not talking about conscription or about sending you off to fight in some damned skirmish against L’zuhl sympathisers in the Hran System! I’m talking about you, Gerry. I’ve seen what you can do, the skills you have at your disposal. Do you want the Alliance to win this war? Because I do. And I think we’d have one heck of a better chance of doing that with your help.’
Gerry pulled away, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him – and I’d watched him absolutely lose it in a Sainsbury’s once when they’d run out of bagels.
‘You think this is easy for me?’ he cried. He glanced at me. ‘Either of you? You think I like having this… thing foisted on me? I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t choose to be anyone’s stupid “Mullet God”. I just want to get on with my life and forget any of this has even happened! I’m just Gerry Francis and that’s all I want to be.’
‘I think you have your answer, General,’ I said. ‘I think that concludes things for today.’
Leigh had a face like a slapped arse and grabbed my elbow, pulling me to one side.
‘This might all seem like a game to you two boneheads, but some of us have real responsibilities. My job is to ensure this Compound survives and thrives in the face of the most hideous threat any of us have ever known and if you think I’m going to forget what I saw up there on Acbaelion Outpost XXI then I’m sorry, but you’re deluded.’
‘General,’ I said, shaking my head, refusing to be cowed, ‘he’s just a man. He’s not a weapon. You can’t hook him up to any of your fancy-dan machines or strap him to some enormous warhead. I know hardly anything about what he can do and poor Gerry hasn’t got the first clue either. We’re all out of our depth. I think… you’ve just got to let this one go.’
I was fully expecting Leigh to fly into a rage at this and maybe even have me arrested again but instead he just looked profoundly sad. His shoulders sagged slightly and he kicked idly at a small pebble on the ground.
‘I want to win this war, Keegan,’ he said, finally meeting my eyes. ‘I need to. The Alliance is hanging on by the tiniest thread, do you know that? Nothing we have tried to repel the L’zuhl’s advances has worked. Nothing. Oh, we’ll win a battle here, destroy the odd spy shuttle there, but it’s small potatoes. They’re sweeping us aside. I didn’t think they could be stopped, if you want the truth. I thought it was only a matter of time until the Alliance’s last defences fell and everything would be lost. Until four days ago when I witnessed something I could hitherto only dream of. A man with the power to vaporise the L’zuhl in the blink of an eye, to eliminate at a stroke the greatest single warship this galaxy has ever known.’
I looked at Gerry, picking distractedly at a bit of loose skin on his thumb; this entirely unremarkable man, suddenly so coveted by so many.
‘Not only that,’ Leigh continued, ‘but this man’s powers can also heal the sick, as well as the mortally wounded like yourself – they can repair the terrible damage wrought by those genocidal maniacs. You say you don’t understand his abilities and that’s true, neither do I. All I know is that when the chips were down, when all seemed lost, something awoke inside your friend and saved our lives. Imagine that on a galactic scale, Keegan! Or worse, imagine a tool like that falling into the wrong hands. Into L’zuhl hands. Do you want that?’
A tool! I was disgusted – what a way to speak about a fellow human being. Plus, as evidenced by the broken tiles and crumbling holes in the wall of my bathroom from the time he’d volunteered to help me with some DIY, Gerry didn’t even know how to use tools, let alone become one.
‘Of course I don’t,’ I muttered numbly. I couldn’t deny it, Leigh’s words had crawled under my skin. He and I weren’t friends, could never be that, but I did feel that we were no longer strictly enemies. Once upon a time I’d have had no time for a single thing that came out of the man’s mouth, but our experience together on the outpost had changed all that. I’d held my own innards in my hands and felt myself slipping away into the great whatever-comes-next before Gerry’s intervention. Listen, that kind of thing changes a man. I wasn’t the same Kevin Keegan as I’d been even a few weeks ago. I’d seen death, stared it right in the eyes and come out the other side. And yet, this was such an ask. Such an ask. ‘I… General, you can’t request this of him. Be reasonable, please. He’s suffered enough.’
‘The human race has suffered enough,’ Leigh countered. ‘Families, friends, colleagues… so many of us have lost so much. I don’t know if you really know how that feels. Look, I’m not going to send a squadron of guards out to kidnap Gerry in the middle of the night. I’m not going to force anyone to do anything against their will. That’s not the kind of ship I want to run. This has to be his own choice. Yours too, if your word is what it takes to ultimately persuade him. But I think the day is coming when you have to choose between your pal… and the rest of us.’
Leigh turned and strode away across the square, leaving me standing there, rooted to the spot. The eerie echo of Akkie’s warning to me when we had parted, of how the prophecy dictated that Slasabo-tik would have to give his life for the galaxy, left me feeling quite ill. I’d tried to brush off those words back then. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Things were coming to a head, and fast. Time was getting away from all of us.
I turned back to the bench to join Gerry, but he was gone. At the far west side of the square I spotted him, head down and hurrying home, the weight of the world apparently upon his shoulders.
The weight of the galaxy.
RUMOURS
Two days later, on the morning of the hearing that would determine Barrington12’s fate, I committed a terrible error of judgement that could have threatened everything.
I was still trying to get my head around the case that was being made again
st him. The way they told it, it had begun a little over a month ago. The robot had been acting peculiarly for some time before his fondness for inexplicably telling people he was free of erectile dysfunction saw him bundled off to maintenance for repairs. They had, however, either failed to spot or had completely ignored a glaring and ultimately devastating flaw in the creaky old Barrington model. Newer editions, like the sleek 800-series, were built with near-impenetrable firewalls but regrettably, no such safeguards existed for the older models like the 12-series. Most of them had long since been retired to the scrapheap, but such were Gillian’s (with respect) penny-pinching tendencies, she had purchased a refurbished 12-series model to assist Gerry and me with team affairs rather than forking out for a snazzier one – and this was to set in motion the terrible events that had followed.
Unbeknownst to any of us, the L’zuhl had been – from afar – prodding and testing the Alliance’s networks for weaknesses for some time and had released a kind of ‘Trojan Horse’ bug into the system – I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant but had always found horses slightly unsettling, with their dead eyes and their powerful limbs, and so I felt quietly pleased to have finally been vindicated in my lifelong mistrust. And so, when Barrington12 plugged himself in to a network socket every day or two to recharge his battery, he was handing over everything in his database to the L’zuhl while also having his own system hacked into to carry out their dirty work. He had been feeding them tidbits for weeks; each time he recharged, he’d slip under their control for a short period. I remembered that day at the library how he had stopped to give himself a short recharge – Rodway himself remarked on having seen him. This had allowed the L’zuhl to access his CPU once again and they had forced him to infiltrate the library’s server room right there and then – and, if not for Gerry’s nosiness in noticing that someone was in there, who knows what information Barrington12 may have handed over. As it was, he had burst out of the room and pinned Gerry behind the shelving, leaving him to die. Once Barrington12’s internal memory banks re-synchronised and enabled him to regain control of his system, he was none the wiser. He hadn’t the faintest idea that he had just attempted to assassinate one of his best friends. And just thinking about that broke my damn heart.
However, it was the prosecution’s contention that Barrington12’s actions had not been so accidental or unwitting – they claimed he had behaved with forethought and deliberation. I just could not believe that. I would not. It simply wasn’t the Barrington12 I had grown to know. I thought about how distressed he had been on discovering Gerry’s body trapped behind the library bookcase that day. Could a machine really fake something like that? No – I had to speak up for him even if nobody else would.
I was on the list of names summoned to appear at the hearing, in my case to speak in Barrington12’s defence. I had been up half the night preparing what I would say and as I heaved myself out of bed, exhausted and frazzled, I decided to pep myself up by walking over to the stereo system and putting on the Greatest Album Ever Made.
I’ve seen people submit all kinds of contenders for that crown down the years and have dismissed each and every one of them. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? The title’s too long so I’ve never bothered listening to it. Pet Sounds? Not half bad, but frankly I can’t hear many animals on there. Blonde on Blonde? Goes on for ages and the title sounds like a dirty film. Crocodile Shoes? It’s Jimmy Nail’s masterpiece and comes close to the top spot, but not quite. There can be only one.
As the belting first track on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours filled the silence of my flat, I hopped in the shower and then had a shave. As I trudged back into my bedroom to the sound of ‘Go Your Own Way’ and dressed in my best shirt and tie (the latter strategically placed to cover up the mustard stains on the former), I picked up my watch and gasped in dismay. I looked at the clock on my bedside table and realised that the batteries had all but given up the ghost overnight and it was over three hours too slow, the second hand ticking along only very intermittently. It was 11.40 a.m. – Barrington12’s hearing had begun at half past.
Given that, at a brisk pace, my flat was only a fifteen-minute walk from the Compound Council building where the hearing would take place, I might have just about made it in time for the start of the prosecution case if I’d thrown my outfit on and dashed out of the door. Under normal circumstances, it would have been doable.
But these were not normal circumstances.
It has been scientifically proven that it is literally impossible to turn off Rumours once it has started. I don’t just mean that it would be the height of disrespect and a woeful slap in the face to the greatest five-piece in soft-rock history, though of course it would very much be that. I mean that it would be physically impossible for someone’s fingers to press a button that would stop the music on that particular album. It simply cannot be done, and if anyone claims otherwise, then in all honesty I wouldn’t want to meet them because they’re almost certainly a serial killer. That’s how strongly I feel. You ask Andy Cole, whom I sold to Man United the day after I overheard him refer to the band as ‘Fleetwood Cack’. I’m sorry, but what kind of manager would I have been – what kind of man – had I let that slide?
I sat there on the side of my bed, feeling dejected and sick, while also simultaneously uplifted by those soulful grooves. I knew I was letting Barrington12 down badly – I’m sure he’d have understood my position, but that wasn’t the point. I was trapped, stuck in my flat as time ticked away, waiting for the last seconds of ‘Gold Dust Woman’ to fade out before I could depart. It was torture. Beautiful, peerless torture.
When I finally arrived at the Council building, bashing into the heavy wooden doors with my shoulder and asking a startled security guard where I could find the Alpha Courtroom, I was sweating, haggard and in no fit state to be anybody’s character witness. Outside the chamber stood two Compound guards, their black visors down over their eyes, rifles gripped tightly in their gloved hands. One stepped in front of me as I tried to enter.
‘The hearing is in session,’ she said coldly. ‘No admittance. Please move along, sir.’
‘But I’m meant to be in there!’ I said, conscious of how small I felt and how pathetic I sounded. ‘Please, it’s really very important!’
‘If it was that important,’ the other guard weighed in, ‘you’d have been here on time. The hearing started almost an hour ago.’
‘That wasn’t my fault,’ I insisted. ‘I’d just put Rumours on and then I realised what the time was.’ To my disgust, this self-evident explanation seemed to make no difference to either of them.
‘Listen, just stand aside,’ I said. ‘My friend is in there and he needs me.’
‘Oh, hang on, I know you,’ the first guard said. I couldn’t see her face but I could hear her lip curling into a smirk beneath the helmet. ‘Yeah, you’re the idiot whose robot was spying for the L’zuhl.’
‘Oh yeah, I know the one you mean,’ joined in Guard Two, openly chuckling. ‘God, how embarrassing. I’m not sure I’d ever show my face in polite society ever again after that if it was me. Go on, clear off.’
Without a moment’s hesitation – for if I had, I’d never have dared – I threw myself to the polished marble floor à la Jürgen Klinsmann celebrating a goal and slid on my front between the pair of them, into the doors of the courtroom. Had they been locked while in session I’d have probably broken my neck, but fortunately for me, they flew wide open and I clambered ungraciously to my feet, hastily straightening my tie to cover up the rogue stain.
The courtroom was a vast space with a high ceiling, from which hung numerous light fixtures. On the right side of the room was an enormous window through which could be glimpsed, distantly, the thrum of life in the square outside. The walls were painted blue and green, the colours of Earth, and two columns of black metal seating, eight rows deep and currently filled to capacity, were installed either side of a pathway that led towards the imposing benches against the f
ar wall. Behind them, dressed in purple satin robes, sat the five members of the Compound Council: Gillian, General Leigh, Dr Pebble-Mill, Doreen McNab and Sir Michael Bowes-Davies. Seated in the middle of the five, presiding over the hearing, was Laika, a gavel clutched in her tiny paws. To the right of them, standing behind a podium and looking desperately miserable, was Barrington12. I beheld genuine sorrow on his face, and in that moment, he became truly human to me. He raised his eyes as I burst into the room. Every head turned to look in my direction. I hadn’t seen a room fall so deathly silent since the hotel bar before an England match when Graeme Le Saux brought along Fiscal Responsibility: The Board Game and asked whether anyone fancied playing.
‘Hey!’ cried the two guards in unison, stepping into the courtroom and grabbing me painfully by both shoulders and trying to hoist me back out into the corridor. I wrestled free and ran towards the Council benches. The guards pursued angrily and soon grabbed me once more.
‘Please!’ I beseeched the Council. ‘I know I’m late and that’s poor form – bang out of order, in fact – but I beg you, let me speak up on behalf of… of my friend.’
